A sensor may be used to gauge a force (e.g., a load, weight, etc.) applied by one or more physical bodies on another physical body. The sensor may be used in various applications (e.g., a microwave oven, a scale, etc.). The sensor may not be very convenient to use, economical, and/or robust in design.
For example, a hospital staff member (e.g., a nurse, a physician, etc.) may need to monitor how well a patient slept on a bed during a night and/or see how many times the patient woke up and/or moved during the night. In some instances, the patient may wander around in a hospital in need of assistance, but the hospital staff member may not be aware that there exists a problem. This may cause a delay in delivering medical services to the patient. In other instances, an automobile (e.g., a car, a truck, a motorcycle, etc.) may waste valuable resources (e.g., time and gas for drivers) waiting at an intersection for a light to turn green when there are no cars crossing the intersection. Precise measurements of ingredients (e.g., sugar, salt, chicken stock, flour etc.) may be time-consuming and burdensome because the ingredients may need to be transported to a measuring device (e.g., a commercial kitchen needing transportation of ingredients between an oven and a scale). Similarly, regulating light in a dark area may be expensive and wasteful (e.g., light may be wasted even when people are not in a room).
A capacitive force-measuring device may be used to measure a force (e.g., a load) applied on it, and/or may generate a measurement associated with the force in some of the examples described above. However, the measurement may be distorted (e.g., because of an unequal application of the force). For example, the load being exerted over the capacitive force-measuring device may be tilted resulting in an error in the measurement. When the capacitive force-measuring device is not stably mounted on a level ground the error may be even greater. The load being exerted over the capacitive force-measuring device on a beam may also cause a tilt (e.g., may cause a divergence of capacitor plates from being parallel, resulting in measurement errors).